A few years before the start of his stint as Jon Snow on the HBO series
Game of Thrones, Kit Harington — just another 18-year-old Brit — was backpacking down the
East Coast of the United States, looking for a warm bed but running low on cash for the last stop
of his trip.

Every cheap room in Washington seemed to be booked, and it was getting late when he finally made
his way to a hostel.

“They said, ‘Well, you can stay in the hammock out back,’” he said. “So I slept one night in a
hammock, and then they put me in a room at the top of the building where there was a lovely, but
rather raving mad, homeless woman in the room.

“And there was a tropical thunderstorm, and I remember being in this hostel on the top bunk with
a raving homeless woman, and the lightning was flashing outside, and I thought, 'Where am I?'"

That was then; this is now.

At age 27, Harington is headlining his first movie, the disaster epic
Pompeii, in which he dons little more than a leather kilt and exhibits chiseled abs.

Harington plays Milo, a gladiator who thinks he’ll face his biggest challenges in the arena, not
realizing that Mount Vesuvius is about to blow.

Television has become a powerful platform for actors. The length of a series gives performers
time to explore the nuances of a character, and TV producers tend to take greater risks than film
financiers.

Becoming a movie star seems the next logical step, and yet it’s hard to imagine a film giving
Harington more exposure than
Thrones has.

Pompeii director Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil) missed out on the early
Game of Thrones mania because of a busy filming schedule.

Then his wife, actress Milla Jovovich, told him he had to watch the series.

“I watched the first episode, and I was so hooked. I watched the first two seasons in 48 hours,
like a nonstop
Game of Thrones-athon,” he said from London. “And I think it’s a wonderful, wonderful
series.

“But the person who really jumped out was Kit Harington playing Jon Snow. I thought this guy was
just a movie star waiting to explode.”

Others in the
Pompeii cast have benefited from the exposure of compulsively watchable TV shows. The
villain, a corrupt Roman senator who has his eye on Milo’s true love, is played by Kiefer
Sutherland (24). Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Mr. Eko on
Lost) plays another gladiator.

“I think it speaks volumes about where TV is at the moment,” Harington said. “A lot of actors
are taking TV scripts far more seriously now.

“You have some great directors moving into TV; you’ve got some great writers writing for TV. I
think it was always sort of a taboo around TV: ‘Are you a TV actor or a movie actor?’ And that’s
sort of disappeared.”

For his role in
Pompeii, Harington transformed his body.

“He was not a gladiator when I met him,” Anderson said.

Five weeks before filming, Harington started bulking up, eating 4,000 calories a day plus
protein shakes and started a regimen of heavy weightlifting.

He gained about 25 pounds before switching to a 2,000-calorie diet with gym sessions three times
a day, six days a week.

He also even learned skills on
Pompeii that came in handy playing Jon Snow. The disaster movie is riddled with combat
scenes, and, when Harington wasn’t filming, he was usually learning fight choreography.

“I went straight from
Pompeii to
Thrones,” he said, “and I went back a noticeably better swordsman.”